Starting Small

At the beginning of last year, I was looking at bigger projects to tackle and explore and to take on goals I thought would really challenge me. I was riding a high from completing all my goals set in 2019 and thought I could get through just about anything. After the roller coaster ride of last year, I’m looking to ground myself and take a look at what’s right in front of me.

Systems Over Targets

Instead of vaguely gesturing “I want to do X,” I’m shifting my focus on the steps needed to make that goal come to fruition. In other words, what systems, habits, processes, technology, etc. do I need to make that thing inevitable?

Another big question I want to look at is “why?” Looking back, it’s probably the biggest challenge I had personally in 2020, focusing on the idea of having done something rather than the actual doing. I don’t think I have any deeper reasons for any of my goals other than “I think it’s what I should do,” or “it seemed interesting.”

I still haven’t figured out the exact answers for this year, but I believe that I’m already off to a better start. I’ve been jotting down ideas in a spreadsheet – projects to work on, places to visit, and even books to read. Just about everything has a column for the answer to “why?” For anything that requires long-term effort, I’m writing down the systems and habits I need in order to actually accomplish it.

Little Lessons

This month, I’m trying out something along those lines, keeping track of any lessons I learn each day. Whatever it may be, I’m making a list of what comes to me. I consume so much content, but it doesn’t always stick. Sometimes I feel I can see a book title and the ideas come back to me. Other times, I’ve completely forgotten the book exists.

Something I started a couple of years ago was to jot down a few notes on the book in Notion, my note-taking app of choice. That way, I could look back and see what I saw as major takeaways. Another service I’ve started recently is Blinkist. It reads highlights that I use as both a preview and review for books. These help a lot with books specifically, but then there are podcasts, videos, written posts and articles, and even just epiphanies my mind comes to on it’s own. 

Here are a some from the first few days of the year:

• 01/01/2021 – Link habits to others, that way even on a bad day, you might find yourself going through the motions
• 01/02/2021 – If you are trying to change someone’s behavior, determine if the change will actually help them before prescribing your “panacea”
• 01/03/2021 – Life is learning; you have to create the lesson plan
• 01/04/2021 – Accomplishment > Efficiency

I’ve made a spreadsheet to store all of these lessons with links to any sources, where applicable. I planned to make a page here on the site, but WordPress is uncooperative with Google Sheets.

This came to me as an idea after a few newsletters I follow pointed to this list of 100 lessons in the same week. After reading through it, with some highlights for my favorites, I thought “what if I did this for the whole year?” If I could learn at least one thing every day, I will have gained 365 pieces of wisdom.